Brigitte Rochas

Brigitte grew up in Paris and held various positions in French companies before moving to Brussels in 1988 to be closer to her family. In Belgium she had the opportunity to "delve deeper into [her] dream of becoming an artist" by enrolling in an art programme at the Fine Arts School of Braine-l'Alleud located in the Walloon Region. The painter began to show her work in 2002 in various cities around Belgium, Holland and France before settling down in her childhood town four years later. In 2008, Brigitte, along with a friend, opened a space based on the concept "En ApARThé" in which she created and showed her canvases. More recently, she has been able to move into her own personal gallery and atelier.

Her work is deeply rooted in an interiority and sensitivity and is composed of informal elements mixing together a range of materials and colours. The abstract acrylic paintings are the product of Brigitte's interpretations and memories. She bases them only on what she remembers, never using sketches or photographs of moments or events. She is an artist who loves the spontaneity of her imagination and therefore she lets her gestures take the lead before interfering and adding her own more conscious mastery to the final result. This back and forth between a more controlled creativity and the free expression of her imagination offers the viewer the chance to interpret the artist's work in his or her own way and to read in it their own story.

Even though Brigitte reaches deep inside herself and her own experience to find the emotion that she expresses on her canvas, her artistic research is intimately linked to the works of three artists that Brigitte considers to be her "masters": the Russian painter Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955), the French painter Olivier Debré (1920-1999) and the Chinese painter and engraver ZaoWouKi (1920-2013).